\documentclass[char]{castle}
\begin{document}

\name{\cPatriarchC{}}

\cenquote{``The boy is not stupid. A web of lies can unravel with the lightest touch of truth!''}{-- Othar Tryggvassen}

You remember it like it was yesterday. You were but a lone lab tech working for the great \cOldHeterodyne{\full}. Brilliant work on pseudocognition and consciousness transfer. Well until \cOldHeterodyne{\they} had \cOldHeterodyne{\their} body stolen by one of the experiments and \cOldHeterodyne{\they} shut down the lab in a fit of rage. You remember that moment of indecision, worrying that the delay might leave you entombed behind the rapidly collapsing hallways, before sprinting back inside to swipe the memory archive. You remember the rush you felt as you finally escaped with your prize, your head full of plans of future glory. That was from the first recording by your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-\cFamCAncestor{\grandparent}, \cFamCAncestor{\full}. But you remember it like it was yesterday.

\cFamCAncestor{} took what he could understand of the weapons designs stored in the device and developed it into a small factory and a minor title of nobility. But his plans were greater than that. \cFamCAncestor{} realized that the real power in the device lay in its ability to send your thoughts down through the centuries, to obtain immortality through memory. And thus it has been for generations in your family. The archive would store the thoughts and plans of each member in turn, sending them on to future generations.

The ability to plan a coherent strategy across centuries has proved a great boon to your family. Although the sparks that your family produced were never the strongest, generations of planning and plotting, managed to become one of the principle weapons manufacturers in the area. Your lead has been solidified by careful planning, deep knowledge, and often by simply outlasting the competition. Your family has also learned deep and subtle ways to manipulate the political landscape. A well-timed newspaper article or popular movement could have lasting impact decades later, and with the time to observe the rules of the ebb and flow of popular thought and the patience to manipulate it you did quite well at it. First and foremost, you discouraged public funding of research, in order to maintain your edge. Of course encouraging greater militarization is also good for business, and greater centralization plays into your long term plans as it will make it easier to take over everything at once when the time comes. Unfortunately, you are not the only one playing this game, others seem to have figured it out too, and the competition to influence the future has been fierce. You have never seen your enemies faces, but you know that they are out there.

But enough of generalities. Your biggest dealing these days have been with the \familyA{}'s and \familyB{}'s. You have been close allies with both sides of the great feud for a century or more. Sure keeping your dealings with one side secret from the other has been difficult, but the ability to play them against each other, ensuring that neither emerges victorious and all the while selling weapons to both has been worth it. And out of this happy arrangement came the boy, who if you're not careful is going to ruin everything.

In recent years, \familyB{} has begun to take the upper hand in the feud. Recent generations have produced a number of strong sparks in that family, threatening to upset the delicate balance that you have maintained for generations. The only mitigating factor was the near constant infighting within that house. That was until the latest crop of children contained but a single male heir for all to rally around.

Now this was happening while you were having your own family problems. Your \cPatriarchC{\myspouse} Caretta had proven to be infertile, leading to difficulties in continuing your lineage. Fortunately, you had a solution to the problems caused by the succession of both your family and of the \familyB{}'s. So you kidnapped the child, made it look like he was killed by an attack from \familyA{}, and began to raise him as your own. Thus in one stroke you heightened the conflict between the other families, kept \familyB{} weak, secured your own line, and brought powerful spark blood into your dynasty. It seemed like such a good idea at the time.

Now that your son, \cAdoptee{}, is a teenager you are not so sure. You thought he would be easier to handle. Perhaps the excitement and chaos comes with the spark. Perhaps it is just being a teenager. Whatever it is, lately it feels like the best you can do to reign him in is barely enough to prevent him from running off and trying to found his own empire, throwing away the advantages carefully accumulated over centuries of work. \cAdoptee{} is at the age where you should be starting to show him the memory archive and teaching him more about the long history of your family. But given the way he's been acting lately, you fear that letting him find out that he was adopted---which he will find out with access to your memories on the device---will chase him away entirely. Worse yet, age is starting to catch up with you and you fear that if you do not begin to let him in on the family secrets soon, it may be too late. Finally, to add icing on the cake, the archive itself has begun to exhibit minor glitches, and you have not the expertise to fix it.

Fortunately, a ray of hope has emerged recently out of the gloom. Some idiot crashed a flying machine into Castle Heterodyne. Rumors seem to suggest that many of the defense systems are down, allowing you easy access to the insides. If you can access the labs that you ancestor worked in all those years ago, there are several things that might help solve your problems. In particular, you recall a device known as the \memoryMacGuffin{}, which has a part in maintaining and restoring memories. With it, you could probably fix the archive. But that alone doesn't solve your problems. You'll need a way to ensure \cAdoptee{}'s loyalty. Convince him, or brainwash him, or simply edit references to his abduction out of its storage. One final solution though would be to find a way to grant yourself a longer life and put off the decision---perhaps forever.

Finally, you should note that the warring families will almost certainly send people to the castle, which provides its own opportunities and hazards. You will need to be circumspect less they discover that you have been playing both sides against the other for some time. On the other hand, it will provide you ample opportunities to add more fuel to the fire and ensure that no winner will be forthcoming any time soon. Finally, it will present an opportunity to sell more weapons, perhaps in exchange for the massive amounts of labor that you need to run your factories.

\begin{itemz}[Goals]
  \item Fix the memory archive.
  \item Ensure \cAdoptee{}'s loyalty, or obtain immortality yourself.
  \item Hide the fact that you have been helping both \familyA{} and \familyB{} in the feud and ensure that the fighting continues.
  \item Acquire 4 units of macroeconomic labor.
  \item Influence society to have less public funding for research and more centralization and militarization.
\end{itemz}


\begin{comment}
\begin{itemz}[Draft of goals]
  \item Fix memory archive
  \item Make adoptee loyal or otherwise control him
  \item Encourage feud between 1 and 2
  \item Economy plot 4 labor
  \item Wants memory MacGuffin
  \item Immortals game
\end{itemz}
\end{comment}

%IMMORTALS:
% Research - -
% Centralization +
% Militarization +

\end{document}
